The Claife Crier:

I make animations to reveal the light behind all things, I re-present legends and myths which have often been missunderstood as fearful when in fact they are tales of delight that lead us out of our worldly constraints into a greater reality. My new poem and film, a ghost story from Windemere in the Lake District, is such a tale transformed…..

A monk from Furness Abbey thought, to save fallen women, but fell –He followed back to her Claife Heights home, because he loved her, so well.

On western shore near Windemere, she abjured his advances, ailing –Unrequited and blighted night and day he fell about, keening and railing.

Soon he died of broken heart – and of his own endlessness of wailing.But his ghost remained, as if detained, his tragedy proclaiming!

As time rolls by, with it many years fly –The monks story quite grew into legend.As the ferrymen tell, after nightime has fell,His howling from Far Sawey sends a supernatural spell.

Uptook himself the boatman and hied himself hither,With a glint in his eye to collect the gold giver.

And the night was dark, and the winds were strong, as the new recruit ferryman rowed fiercely along –But he did not return till the following day, if you listen carefully you will hear what he had to say…

”Over lake, over wave, over fell, marsh and brier,Quick as horse, faster than fire,Mayhap a rook or babbling brook,I chased before morning along pathways forsook!”

Stark raving-mad, or so it would seem,The young returned ferryman with staring eyes appears lost in a dream.

”Audacious, outrageous, unspeakably spoken,before a thought, word or deed, but with laughter as token,through hither, through thither, through widdershins and beyonder,It cannot be so, yet cannot assunder!’

Ranting-delerious, as if witless, and yet….Something he says, I cannot forget!

”By sunshine, by moonbeam, by starlight and shinning!!Possibly near and possibly farling…could it be real, or implausibly vague?Undoubted a riddle, a vision arcane!”

Methinks the young boatman some secrtes did see,Of the love lorn monk from the twelfth century –His account although rambling, incoherant and wild,Reveals thatalong Lakeside strange magic was styled.

The ghost, I reveal, was meerely a shade,A sad memory left behind – in love’s grief it was made.For the young boatman has described in no uncertain detail,That Robin Goodfellow himself has taken the old monk through the veil!

Ponder then, if as you live you do wonder –Where do they go – those whom love takes assunder.And though shadows may fall and shades reach very tall,Beyond every kind of knowing, to the green of the growing we are all in thrall.

c.Celestial Elf 2014.A Ghostly Tale of the Lake District, rewritten.

Original poem written and narrated by Celestial Elf, adapted from a Lake District legend.

The ghost was formerly a monk in Medieval times from Furness Abbey, his mission had been the rescue of a fallen women. He however fell completely in love with one such woman, whose rejection sent him madly crying his anguish on the heights of Claife, until he died of a broken heart and his ghost has haunted the region ever since.

Whilst the local ferrymen knew not to collect his fare across the lake after dark, many years later a new ferryman with little belief in the old legends mistook his cry for a call, and he went out for the fare. When he returned however, his hair had turned white, he never spoke again and died soon after. In the original story, soon after this a priest came and contained the ghostly presence to a cavern where he still may be.

In my adaptation of this tale I have allowed for the young ferryman to rant and rave about what he saw, which had clearly unsettled him, as any experience with the supernatural is likely to do to most folks. Here, the ghost remains, but he is meerely a shadow cast by the grief that killed the monk. I have introduced ‘Robin Goodfellow’ to explain how despite its ghostly origins this is nevertheless a love story. The monk’s spirit has infact been taken away to realms beyond the real, love is a magical story after all…

Photograph; Windemere co Andy Naler.

About Furness Abbey

Furness Abbey, or St. Mary of Furness is a former monastery located in the northern outskirts of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, founded in 1123 by Stephen, Count of Boulogne for the Order of Savigny. Located in the ‘Vale of Nightshade’, south of Dalton-in-Furness, Furness Abbey was once the second wealthiest and most powerful Cistercian monastery in the country.

The monks of the abbey were large landowners, and the most powerful body in what was then a remote border territory. In particular, they were heavily influential on the Isle of Man.

Being about 70 miles down the coast from Scotland, the monks occasionally found themselves in between the regularly warring Scots and English. When Robert the Bruce invaded England, the abbot paid to lodge and support him, rather than risk losing the wealth and power of the abbey.

The Abbey was disestablished and destroyed in 1537 during the English Reformation under the order of Henry VIII.

Ghosts At The Abbey
There are many stories and sightings claiming that Furness Abbey is haunted, with three main ghosts;

Firstly, one of the monks that was brutally murdered in the Reformation is said to be seen climbing one of the staircases in the Abbey. The figure appears to be leaning on the banister as being pulled up the stairs.

Another sighting is that of a squire’s daughter and her partner. These figures were known for attempting to repair the Abbey ruins after the Reformation, one day her partner took a journey out to sea from which he never returned. It is thought that the girl went back to the Abbey every day until her death to take in the site she and her partner once loved, the track she walked is today still known as “My Lady’s Walk.” There have also been many sightings of a White Lady, although it is unknown whether the White lady and the ghost of the squire’s daughter are the same person or not.

Possibly the most famous ghost of Furness Abbey is a headless monk on horseback, who rides underneath the sandstone arch near the Abbey Tavern, this death of this individual is also likely to be attributed to the Reformation.

Of “Robin Goodfellow”

Robin Goodfellow” or Puck as he has been known since medieval times, is one of the most popular characters in English and Celtic folklore, being a faerie, elf or hobgoblin famous for shape-shifting and misleading travellers, but also known to sometimes be a helpful domestic sprite. ( More about Puck through the Ages here ).

Puck’s euphemistic ‘disguised’ name is “Robin Goodfellow” or Hobgoblin, in which “Hob” may substitute for “Rob” or simply refer to the “Goblin of the Hearth” the Hob. The earliest reference to Robin Goodfellow as such is from 1531. However, after Meyerbeer’s successful opera Robert le Diable (1831), neo-medievalists and occultists began to apply the name of Robin Goodfellow to the (christian) Devil, with appropriately extravagant imagery. Puritans, like Robert Burton, felt fairies were devils, including “Hobgoblins, & Robin Goodfellows”. In his Anatomy of Melancholy , Burton writes “Terrestrial devils, are those Lares, Genii , Faunes, Satyrs, Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Goodfellowes , Trulli, etc. which as they are most conversant with men, so they do them most harme.” (Quoted in A Dictionary of Fairies by Katharine Briggs, p.53)

Robin Goodfellow’s Dream of Fairyland · John Franklin

Aside from William Shakespeare‘s famous use of Robin Goodfellow in his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, many other writers have referred to him as well, including Ben Jonson in his 1612 masque Love Restoredwhich is a ‘vindication of love from wealth – a defense of the court revels against the strictures of the puritan city.’. Jonson describes Puck/Robin Goodfellow as the emissary of Oberon, the Fairy King of the Night, inspiring night-terrors in old women but also carding their wool while they sleep, leading travelers astray, taking the shape of animals, blowing out the candles to kiss the girls in the darkness, twitching off their bedclothes, or making them fall out of bed on the cold floor, tattling secrets, and changing babes in cradles with elflings. All his work is done by moonlight, and his mocking, echoing laugh is “Ho ho ho!”

Ever mysterious, both young and old – sometimes male, sometimes female, with his capricious wit, magical fancy and fun-loving spirit, he plays with mortals as if they were mere puppets. Yet at the end of Shakespeares’s Midsummmer Nights Dream (in the epilogue), Puck’s speech explaining his actions compares the audience to the lovers whom in the play did awaken from the mad happenings of the fairy world as if from a dream;

“If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended:

That you have but slumbered here,

While these visions did appear;

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend.

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I’m an honest Puck,

If we have unearned luck

Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long;

Else the Puck a liar call:

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.”

(W.Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV, scene II).
Puck’s quote above is perfect as an allegory of this mortal coil. As in Jonson’s play, Shakespeare and others have taken pains to make clear that whilst Robin Goodfellow is indeed mischevious and mercurial, an embodiment of the power of magic, he also represents the difficulties of love which elevate our human selves beyond the mundane of our mortal lives. In our love then, were we said to die to our old life and discover another, we might apprehend the worlds where magical beings reside, such as Puck perhaps, to join with them in a dance of the mysterium ad infinitum.

In this vein I found the spirit of Robin Goodfellow to be dancing through the Claife Crier ghost story which although tragic, is afterall still a love story of sorts. Puck has whispered in my ear, that despite appearances to the contrary, those whom love has led awry will never be abandoned in their ardour. Though the object of their affections may turn aside, if love is true, they will indeed be spirited away – to awaken in a higher realm where their heart has led them.